This week I have the pleasure of sharing with you a small job I just did for a customer.

Two chairs that sit out on the porch year round, finally lost their bout with mother nature and the seats rotted. So, I had to make complete new seat cushions (including the wood seat base). I did cheat a little by putting a coat of Rustoleum on the chair frames before hand.

Now let me walk you through the process of making new seats for this chair from scratch.

First you will need to make a template of the seat.

You can do this using a piece of cardboard, I used an old carpet tile that I had laying around the shop.

Laying it in place where the seat would be, trace the seat frame from underneath.

Using a scissor, cut your template out and lay it in place on the chair.

If it fits, you're ready for the next step.

Using your template, draw an outline on a piece of ½ inch plywood.

Making sure you have your plywood secure, cut out the seat base using a jigsaw and sand all edges till they are smooth and all corners are rounded.

Set your seat base in place to double check the fit.

If it does not, trim as needed or make a new one.

If it fits, lay it on your foam padding and draw an outline.

Cut the foam along the outline. It should match your seat base when your done.

Pulling the fabric tight, staple it about every 5 or 6 inches all the way around.

Then go around second time pulling the spaces between the staples tight and staple as needed.

Cut away any excess fabric.

Secure your seat to the chair frame. In this case being that it was going to be out in the weather, I used ½ inch wire fasteners. As an added measure, I painted the exposed side of the wood with a coat of the Rustoleum paint.

Now it’s time to have a seat and enjoy your work.

Update:

After writing this article, I decided to do a video on Repairing a chair seat.